


We're A Team, Right?

by voxmyriad



Series: Gallery Narrations [2]
Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Art Fill, Devil Miss Pauling, Devil Scout, Gen, Neither of them being a little shit, Or a sexy scary demon, Suddenly Backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-05
Updated: 2015-01-05
Packaged: 2018-03-05 11:25:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3118403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voxmyriad/pseuds/voxmyriad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scout and Miss Pauling are a team. They've been a team for a long time. They'll figure this out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We're A Team, Right?

**Author's Note:**

> So [teafortteu](http://teafortteu.tumblr.com) drew [Devil Scout](http://teafortteu.tumblr.com/post/106981199188/heres-devil-scoot-colored-i-figured-since-i) first, and then someone suggested she draw [Devil Pauling](http://teafortteu.tumblr.com/post/107156361678/i-made-a-devil-pauling-to-go-along-with-the-first), and then my brain ran with it.

Just as the setting sun painted a strip of red on the wall, there was a knock on the door. "Come in," Miss Pauling said absently as she finished filling out an inventory form, set it aside, picked up the next.

"—don't see you visiting her while she's here, so shut up about it," Scout was saying to one of the others as he opened the door and stepped inside. "Hey, Miss Pauling. You got a minute? I brought you some coffee." He hefted the steaming mug.

"Oh, thank you, Scout. You can put it there." She nodded to an open spot on her desk. "Then close the door."

Scout set the coffee down as indicated and closed the door behind him. Tracing an intricate sigil of silence and concealment was not a normal next step, especially when the lines he drew with a finger flared briefly and left a faint ember-like glow behind on the wood, but Miss Pauling didn't say anything until he turned and, rather ostentatiously, blew on the stream of smoke coming from his index finger. "Door's closed, Miss Pauling. Got at least half an hour."

"We need that long?" Miss Pauling's face fell and she slumped back in her chair. "I take it you haven't found it."

Scout pulled his hat off and scrubbed a hand through his hair. He could never sit still. As he paced to the window, the last dregs of sunlight glinted off the outline of horns. "Not yet. I don't think they know I'm lookin' yet though. I gotta be careful. I talk all the time anyway but I can't ask any weird questions. You know how hard it is to find that balance with these freakin' suspicious bastards?"

"I do, and I'm glad you're taking the time. The last thing we need is an open-air fight between you and this angel, whoever he is." Miss Pauling spun a pen through her fingers, then set it down. "Well, do you know who it isn't?"

Scout perched in the open window, then hopped down when Miss Pauling scowled and gestured him away. Better safe than sorry; they didn't even know if the rogue was on the RED team at all, and anything could spook it. "Pretty sure it ain't Pyro."

"Either one?"

"Hey, let's work through one side before you start quizzin' me on the guys I can't even talk to every day, okay? It ain't the RED Pyro. I talked to him for an hour a couple days ago, about bein' Catholic back home, goin' t'Mass on Sundays, Heaven and Hell and angels and everything, and he never flinched. I mean, it's hard t' tell, the mask an' all, but I got a feelin'. He's just a guy. A weird guy, maybe, but yeah, he's human."

Miss Pauling pulled a book out of her bottom desk drawer. It wasn't any particular color, or size. When she opened it, there was nothing written on the pages, except when there was. She picked up the pen and her hand glitched and fizzed across the paper. "All right, I'll trust you. Who else?"

"Could be Sniper. But I think he's just a guy too." Scout flipped the chair around and sat, crossing his arms on the back. "He doesn't talk much, but he's just here to do his job. We figured the angel'd have some other reason, right? Angels don't make good mercenaries, you said that."

"They don't. It's surprising, given how sharply they're defined when they first show up on our radar, but once they get here and their edges start dulling, they question too many things to stick to black-and-white. No, he has another reason to be here."

"You mean _it_ does."

Miss Pauling glanced up to see Scout sitting motionless, staring her down. "Of course I mean _it_ ," she said, a bit more sharply than necessary. "But given that they're all embodiments of men, it's easy to think of it as a _him_ right now. Who else?"

Scout watched her a moment longer, then shrugged. "I thought Medic for a while, he's got some weird obsession with bodies an' I know that happens sometimes when angels get theirs for the first time, but nah, he's just weird. Everyone's weird here. I swear, if we didn't _know_ for sure it was here, I'd say we had a dead end situation."

Miss Pauling sighed and rubbed at the base of one of her horns. "Do you have _any_ leads?"

"Well...I mean, it ain't based on much. I know we gotta be _sure_. I wasn't even gonna mention."

"Scout, if you have anything, even the smallest—"

"I think it's the BLU Engie."

Miss Pauling sat back. "...really. I thought you said you hadn't begun considering anyone from BLU until you'd exhausted all the possibilities on RED."

"Yeah I did, and I ain't really started lookin' at him, it's just a feeling."

"We've done worse than followed one of your feelings before," she reminded him. "Remember Riga?"

"That was just a fluke, okay, I didn't _know_ there was gonna be a _siege_ , I was just sick of looking all over freakin' Riga for someone we didn't even know for sure was there!"

"Even so, we got out just in time because you insisted we leave that night, did you ever think about what would have happened if we'd been stuck—ugh, all right, never mind." Miss Pauling waved a hand, dismissing the memory of the argument that had led to them narrowly missing being trapped in Riga during the Russian siege in 1650-something. "The BLU Engineer, let's get back to him."

"It's nothin' specific. He's just real nice to everyone."

"There's no crime in being nice. _I'm_ nice to everyone."

"'Scuse me, Miss Pauling, but your nice ain't like his nice. He's just…" Scout got up again, restless, always moving. On the door, the faint glow of the lines was fading slowly, leaving black scorch marks behind. "He's just real glad to see everybody. Even us. Every day, the first time we run into him, he's just got this _grin_ , like seein' our Heavy and Medic runnin' up on him is the highlight of his freakin' day. Doesn't stop him from killin' 'em dead, but it's just there for a second. Even me. He's just real happy to see us."

Miss Pauling watched him poking the few books in the bookcase in the corner. They were farmer's almanacs, ancient, useless by now. "You're right. My nice isn't the same as his nice. But that isn't much to go on."

"I know. I wasn't gonna even say anything until you made me," he said, shoving a book back into place upside down. "I ain't makin' much progress, Miss Pauling. You sure we gotta find this thing?"

"I'm sure. They insist."

"Yeah, but…" Scout dropped back into the chair, shoulders tense, flexing his fingers in their wraps. "I figured I was lookin' for someone who couldn't handle all this, y'know? Someone who can't do all this killin' every day, even if it ain't killin' for keeps. I figured someone'd start cracking. But I know it's here somewhere, we both know that, an' there's no one here who can't handle it, an' what if it is the Engie, an' he's still strong enough to come here an' do all this an' _still_ grin at everyone like they're comin' home?"

Miss Pauling tidied up a few papers to hide her shaking hands. "You think he might be here because it's where he's supposed to be."

"Look, I don't know. I could be wrong. He could still be a rogue. He could just be a really freakin' happy guy, what do I know? Hey, Miss Pauling." Scout took the papers out of her hands and set them aside, a little roughly. She winced as a few floated to the floor out of order. "We're a team, right? We've been a team for freakin' ever, since, what, the 9th century."

"Early 10th, what's your point?"

"My point is, all this is just a hunch. So I have good feelings about stuff sometimes. Don't mean I'm right." Scout glanced over his shoulder. The sigil was almost burnt out. "You want me to move on him?" he asked quietly, balling one hand into a fist on the desk. "I ain't as young as I used to be, an' if he's here because he's s'posed to be, with how strong he'd be from that, I'd be freakin' screwed, but I can corner him. Find out."

"No." Miss Pauling shook her head, and her second 'no' came out calmer. "No. Don't do anything. Not yet. I'll, let me just, I'll write it down." Her hand blurred over the pages of the book again before she closed it and slid it into the bottom of her drawer again. "Keep looking. We'll just...we'll keep looking."

Scout nodded and backed toward the door and put a hand on the knob just as the last of the sigil vanished into ash. "We'll keep looking. Hey, Miss Pauling." 

She looked up at his crooked grin, the same on every face for a thousand years. "Yes, Scout?"

"You know we got this, right? You an' me, we're a team. We got this."

She allowed herself a smile back, quiet and tired but genuine. "I know. Thank you, Scout."

"Hey, anything for you. Better drink that coffee before it gets too cold." The door opened, and closed behind him with more force than necessary. It shook loose some old ash clinging to the wood. Miss Pauling swept it up and went back to work.


End file.
